The Viennese Waltz(18)

“I thought that was someone called Coleman Walker?”

“No, he is the head of their Federal Reserve Bank.” Moses shrugged. “There is no good analogy to the Federal Reserve Bank in the Empire.” It wasn’t the partly government, partly private nature of the Fed that would be hard to explain to Gundaker von Liechtenstein. It was things like the limits on the infinite checkbook. Those things were hard enough for Moses to follow and he had been to Grantville and met the people. Anyway, that was all beside the point so far as Gundaker von Liechtenstein was concerned. “You know that they do not draw the lines of nobility the same way we do. This is not as concrete as I would prefer, but I would have to place the whole family in the upper echelons of the up-timers. In the same category as Mike Stearns, Ed Piazza or Julie Sims.”

“Well, Karl can’t be thinking about marrying the girl. Is she one of those up-timer pseudo-Catholics like that Father Mazzare?”

Moses blinked. Cardinal Larry Mazzare had been approved by the pope, but it was hardly a Jew’s place to be telling that to a staunch Counter-Reformationist like Gundaker von Liechtenstein. Besides which, Gundaker was a very smart man whose intelligence was only outdistanced by his stubbornness. Instead, Moses looked down at his folder. “No. They are Baptist.”

“What’s that?”

“Apparently it evolved from the Anabaptist, or is related to the Anabaptist. Honestly, Prince Gundaker, I am no expert on the Christian faith.”

“The Anabaptists aren’t Christians. They are heretics!” Gundaker looked at Moses and then, after a moment, waved it off. Moses knew Gundaker’s views, and knew that Gundaker dealt with him as a sort of necessary evil, but was firmly convinced that absent conversion to the true faith of the Catholic church, Moses was going to hell. He also knew that in Gundaker’s world view, Moses, by virtue of being a Jew, deserved to go to hell. Gundaker tolerated Jews because of their usefulness, not out of any love for them or respect for their views. But the prince was still speaking. “I will have to write my nephew and warn him away from the up-timer.”

On the road to Regensburg

“I don’t friggin’ believe this,” Ron Sanderlin said. “This is not a road. It’s not even a path. This is a friggin’ game trail. Deer would find this a hard route.”

The problem was a section of what, in a fit of aggrandizement, was locally called a “road.” It was about four feet wide and consisted of mud impregnated with rocks. And from the size of the rocks, it looked like it was ready to give birth. That wasn’t the worst part, though. The worst part were the two trees that were growing closer together than two trees that size ought to be capable of.

“Did you happen to bring a chainsaw?” Sonny Fortney asked.

“No. You know how much they’re worth now and most of them haven’t been converted to use alternate fuels. So I sold it.”

“Yep. Me too,” Sonny agreed. “I guess it’s time for axes.”

“What about the stumps?”

“We’ll have to burn the stumps after we take down the trees. But, unless we want to burn the whole grove, we need to take the trees down first.”

“Who owns the trees?” Hayley Fortney asked.

Sonny hooked his thumb at the village they had passed through about five minutes back. “Probably them.”

Even when the road was “good,” they made only about three miles an hour, because of the wagons. And now that they were in the Upper Palatinate, the roads were rarely all that good for all that long. It was a case of “go a little, stop, fix the road, and then go a little more.” For the last eleven miles, they had been doing fairly well and they had passed a village without stopping about two miles back.

Istvan was sitting his horse. “I’ll ride back and ask them.” He turned to one of the mercenaries that were acting as guards. “Conrad, you ride ahead and check at the next village on the road. One of them at least ought to know. Meanwhile, we rest the horses and have an early lunch.”

* * *

The two trees, in fact the whole grove, were part of the village that they had passed. The villagers had the right to gather firewood from the grove, but not the right to chop down whole trees. On the other hand, the villagers were supposed to keep the road in good repair. And that would justify cutting down at least one of the trees, possibly both. The village council was not in any great hurry to settle things—because their party were up-timers and, to the locals, something between a circus and a zoo. In spite of the fact that they were getting into harvest time, the village was happy to have them stay as long as it took to make the best profit—er, deal—possible.